Читать книгу Enchanted Ground - Temple Bailey - Страница 7

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It was in the mornings that Boone Musgrave was at his best. He liked everything that the morning brought—his cold shower, the things he had for breakfast, the serene beauty of his orange groves. He always walked in them in the early morning—as a devotee visits an altar before he begins the day.

For Boone gave to his orange trees an almost fanatic adoration. He had loved many women, but none of them with the mad passion he squandered on his groves. From the moment that, hung in bridal white, they flung their fragrance far and wide, to the poignant season when the golden fruit was stripped for packing, he worshipped and served. A lazy man normally, there was no limit to his energy when directed towards the up-building and development of his groves.

Daily he saluted them, “My beauties, my beauties!” For there was in him something of the poet, though no one knew, not even his mother, and men thought him hard as stone. As, indeed, a Shylock, demanding his pound of flesh of those who did not live up to the letter of their agreements.

Yet he was a young and handsome Shylock, knowing his charms, and knowing, too, his strength. His wide acres were unencumbered by debt. In the banks up north, his securities were lodged, safe against fluctuations of the market. He had come out of the panic rich, and he had come because he had given no man quarter. A poor boy, he had fought his way to affluence, and he would fight to the end. That was the way he was made, a fighter—the way life had made him. And he gloried in it—in his fine house, and the deference paid to him because of his possessions. But most of all, he gloried in his trees—the long, straight aisles of them sweeping back from his house to the bay.

He picked this morning, as always, a pale yellow globe of grapefruit, and carried it with him when he went in for breakfast. At the table, he cut it himself, expertly, with a keen steel blade. Then he ate it with a thin old silver spoon. His man, Alec, brought in presently delicate crescents of fried fish. Boone had caught the fish by moonlight. He often fished at night, and it was on one of these expeditions that Mary had seen him—as she rode with Peter on the night her father had shot himself.

When the servant came in, a cat followed him—one of a small, mottled breed which abounds in Florida, white and orange and black. Boone could never have told why he had chosen this particular kitten from among the others. But it had attached itself to him, and he liked to have it near, although it had no beauty except a certain lithe sleekness. It followed him like a dog, but it did not obey him. And Boone, who demanded obedience from all things about him, was amused by the thought that this small creature chose to defy him. He called it Boots, and laughed at it, and loved it, because in some subtle way it met his own rebellious moods, his hardness, his withdrawal from his kind.

Alec spread a newspaper on the floor, and Boots sat on it. He sat with patience until Boone dropped crisp morsels of fish down to him. Boots ate daintily, and, at last replete, washed his smug little face with an expert paw.

Boone finished his breakfast and rose. The cat trotted after him. Together they went back to the orange groves. The pickers had not yet arrived, so Boone and Boots wandered in solitude. They were both sleek and happy—Boone in corduroy breeches and high-laced boots, a white shirt open at the neck. His head was bare—his hair, brushed back from his forehead, was thick and dark. His eyes, gray and inscrutable, were lighted at the moment by a look that people seldom saw. To the right and left of him were bright trees and bright fruit. The air was clear as wine, intoxicating.

“Great morning, Boots,” he said.

Boots was unresponsive. His eyes were on a stealthy movement in the grass. A snake, perhaps, or, better still, a mouse.

It was a snake—thin, long, and harmless. Boone killed it with a billet of wood he snatched from a pile. The snake writhed in their wake as they went on. Now Boots was stalking a lizard. His hunter’s instinct was never quiescent. Boone had the same instinct. What he wanted, he got. He hoped Boots would get the lizard. He liked to see the battle go to the strong.

But Boots lost the lizard, and again trotted behind Boone. The two of them came presently to a house at the far end of the grove, where lived Boone’s mother. It was the house in which Boone had been born. It had been a shabby place, but now it was white-painted, and the grounds were kept in order by Boone’s gardener. Boone’s own house stood in sight of the road, a fine and stately mansion, but his mother had refused to share it with him. “I’ll stay in a place of my own,” she had said. “I bent my knee to your father, but I won’t bend it to you.” It had been a tribute to his masterfulness, but it was also a declaration of her own strength in resisting him.

Yet she was proud of him, and between them existed a devotion founded on her pride in him, and his respect for her integrity. For she possessed what he lacked. “No kin of mine ever drove a hard bargain,” she would tell him. “You got your sharp ways from your Daddy.” Yet she loved him, and in a way looked up to him.

He found her now among the cabbages in her garden. She was neatly dressed, and showed still a trace of the beauty which had been hers when Boone’s father married her. She had belonged to a Georgia family of aristocratic traditions, and her elopement with a man of inferior stock had separated her from them forever. She had become what her husband had made her, and it was not until her son’s rise in the world that she had escaped from the heart-breaking hardness of her life.

Boone came to see her every morning. She rose to greet him.

“Hard at work, Mother?”

“Cutting a cabbage for my dinner.”

“Perhaps I’ll come down and eat with you. Nothing tastes so good as your boiled dinners.”

“I’m glad you think so.”

She took off her rough straw hat, and fanned herself with it. “I hear you’ve sold White Feathers.”

“Yes. To a man named Hamilton.”

“From the north?”

“Virginia.”

“What did he pay you?”

He told her.

“Too much, Boone, and you know it.”

He laughed, “Don’t worry about me, Mother. I’ve made my way, and I’ll go on making it.”

“Until the Lord takes a hand in it.”

“The Lord helps those who help themselves. I’ve as good a right to money as anybody. I like the things it brings me.”

“It hasn’t brought you love, and it hasn’t brought you friends. I don’t believe you ever loved anyone but yourself, Boone.”

“Except you, Mother. Believe it or not, I love you.”

She did believe him, and when he went away, she sat thinking about it—of how little she had been able to leave the imprint of her ideals upon him. “His Daddy was too strong for me,” she told herself. “I couldn’t set myself against him.”

Boone’s mind, as he made his way back to the bayou, was on his mother. He rarely dwelt on his emotions. Every morning he visited Margaret Musgrave, and then for the day he was done with her. He had other things to think about. Yet today one sentence of hers remained with him, and he found himself turning it over and over. “I don’t believe you’ve ever loved anyone but yourself, Boone.”

People wondered why he had not married. Boone wondered himself. He had found women to love, but he wanted a wife different from any of them. A wife like his mother. Not in body, for she must be young and beautiful. Nor in mind, for she must be modern, and learned in the things which belonged to fine and distinguished living. But she must be like his mother in spirit—one whom he could bend, but not break. And one who could resist so strongly as to make the bending exciting.

His father had gone too far. Boone wanted softness for his wife. He wanted her lovely in his stately house. He wanted her better than himself, as his mother was better. And what he wanted he intended to get. That was why he had waited.

He came at last to a vista which showed, at the end of a long aisle of trees, the blue of the bayou. He loved that vista, and stopped for a moment to feast his eyes upon it.

Then, all at once, he was aware of a figure not far from him. A figure which, as the sun shone on it, seemed to belong to his grove, as an oread belongs to the mountains, or a nymph to the sea. A girl sheathed in pale yellow, her hair a nimbus of pale gold, stood with her face lifted to the light. Above and about her hung shining fruit. To Boone, she seemed Beauty Incarnate, his trees made flesh—a miracle.

He took a step toward her, and their eyes met. “I’m Mary Hamilton,” she said. “My father wanted me to see you.”